[Obama's] going to have to be more assertive than he’s been. At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time. I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.

It seems the Treasury Department agrees with Frank.

Dobson took aim at Obama’s asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. “Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said. Dobson accuses Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament. “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said. ”He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Of course, Obama is hardly the first to raise the question of which Biblical principles should be applied in creating public policy. And he raises an important issue: just which principles are now antiquated and no longer need to be followed? I hardly think Dobson would agree that the Old Testament texts used to justify a Biblical injunction against same sex marriage would be antiquated.

So the question really is—and this is especially important when you look at what Jesus had to say about homosexuality (which is absolutely nothing)—how can we tell which part of the Bible is antiquated and need not be followed, and which part isn’t? Can you answer that for us, James?

For his part, McCain, of course, while he once referred to Parsley as “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide,” keeps reminding everyone that he was not a member of either Hagee or Parsley’s church for the last twenty years, an obvious reference to Obama’s affiliation with Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. 

McCain has been a member of North Phoenix Baptist Church for a number of years. If I were his pastor, whose name is Dan Yeary, I think I would be rather nervous right about now, wondering what I’ve said that may come back to haunt me … and Senator McCain.

There is one thing that will bring the Democrats together (and I have never believed that the prolonged primary struggle between the two has been a fatal or even a seriously damaging one to the party) and it is more apparent now than ever: Obama and Clinton need to be on the same ticket, Obama as president and Clinton as vice-president. I know Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have said it won’t happen, but it should happen. The true test of leadership and of the gravitas it takes for a first-term senator to deserve the nomination and the presidency is to make sure it happens.

Of course, Democrats have long been famous for screwing up elections and eating their own, so it probably won’t happen. But it should. Now.

Greenwald goes on to say that “John McCain’s entire worldview on foreign policy, cheered on excitedly by Lopez — not only with regard to endless war in Iraq but also Iran and beyond — is nothing but a vehement violation and rejection of “the Church’s teaching on innocent human life.”

On this Greenwald is correct, but right-wing Catholics, of course, are not the only ones who hijack theology in order to pick and choose.

UPDATE: In the meantime, Frank Rich has more details on another preacher to be watched in this election year, Reverend John Hagee and his candidate of choice, John McCain. Be sure to watch the video. Scary stuff …